The Saturn V Rocket of the Apollo 4 mission, stands at the launch pad in November 1967; Photo credit: NASA
The Saturn V rocket was developed under the direction of Wernher von Braun, the German-born engineer, and Adolph Hitler’s star rocketeer. The Saturn V went from idea on paper to actual flight in a period of six years. The rocket’s first flight was the unmanned Apollo 4 mission in 1967. It’s first manned flight was Apollo 8 in 1968.
The Saturn V had a height of 363 feet, and a width of 33 feet. It weighed 6,540,000 lbs, with a payload of 310,000 lbs to (low earth orbit) and a payload of 90,000 lbs to the moon. The Saturn V was a three stage rocket: The first stage was powered by five F-1 engines, the second stage by five J-2 engines, and the third stage by a single J-2 engine.
The first stage of the Saturn V, saw the five F-1 engines use 20 tons of fuel a second, producing 7.5 million pounds of thrust. When Charles Lindberg crossed the Atlantic in 1927 in his Spirit of St. Louis, the small plane used 450 pounds of fuel for the entire flight. The Saturn V used 10x that amount in it’s first 1/10 of a second.
The five F-1 engines of the Saturn V; Photo credit: space.com
The Saturn V remains the tallest, heaviest and most powerful rocket to launch. It holds the record for heaviest payload launched. Fifteen Saturn V rockets were built, but only thirteen saw flight, with all 13 launching from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. To this date, it remains the only vehicle to transport humans beyond low earth orbit. 24 astronauts were sent to the moon on the Saturn V. Of its thirteen missions, the Saturn V saw no loss of life or loss of payload. However, the rocket was tested by Mother Nature during Apollo 12, when lightning struck the vehicle moments after launch. Other than some strange warning lights within the cockpit, there was no major damage, and they went on to land in the moon’s Ocean of Storms. Which seems more than appropriate.
The Saturn V saw it’s final flight on May 14, 1973, when it carried Skylab into orbit.
